Van Gogh's Paintings: Step a Little Closer

When my son Mack was three months old, our family had the opportunity to travel to Europe with a school tour. While I was taking a group of students through Versailles, just outside Paris, my husband, Jim, toured the Musée d’Orsey with the baby. Just as they came to the room featuring Vincent van Gogh’s art, Mack reached his limit and began to cry. Nervous about disrupting other museum goers, Jim tried to quickly calm him down but had no luck. A kind woman standing nearby commented as Jim took the crying baby out of the room, “Ah. I see he does not like van Gogh. Neither do I.”

I guess love of a particular artist can’t be transferred in utero because I love van Gogh’s works and I have for years. Perhaps the love began because van Gogh’s art is a prominent part of contemporary culture. I’m not sure if it is a compliment or insult to van Gogh that you can buy a mouse pad or coffee mug featuring Starry Night. But our society seems caught up with van Gogh’s works. Why do you think he is such a popular artist?

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art I was excited to see his Wheatfield with Cypresses, with its dramatic contrast of horizontal and vertical shapes. But there were two van Gogh paintings that particularly struck me because I had the opportunity to see them up close.

The first, Self Portrait in Straw Hat, 1887, is also displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. From 1886-1889, van Gogh painted over 30 self-portraits. Check out this great video montage of some of these portraits. There are many fascinating theories as to why van Gogh repeatedly used himself as his subject matter. In his essay “Self-Portrait as Self-Image,” critic James Risser claims, “The unfolding image portrayed in these paintings seemingly parallels the life of the artist, Vincent van Gogh. We see in the portraits what we know all too well of this painter's life: the growing frenzy of an unfinished life more and more out of control” (151). Van Gogh, himself, said that he did so many self portraits because he couldn’t afford to pay models and he still wanted to work on his technique (van Gogh 3: 201).

The Met’s display of this painting is unique. The painting is fairly small (12 ½” x 16”) when compared to van Gogh’s other exhibits, and much of the other art throughout the museum. The painting is not displayed on the wall of the museum but set on a pedestal in front of van Gogh’s other works. This display invited me to step in close. The closer I came to the painting, the more powerful the painting became. The brush strokes separated, giving me the sense that I was part of the creation process . . . almost as if I were seeing the painting made right before me. Up close I noticed one small brush stroke of blue in the corner of van Gogh’s eye. Perhaps this represents a tear. Perhaps it simply repeats the blue that is woven throughout the painting. But that brush stroke both excited and haunted me. It excited me because I’d seen something in this painting that I hadn’t seen before in reproductions. Once I stepped a few paces back, I saw that most of the brush strokes in the painting point to this one stroke. How could I have missed it before? It also haunted me because it evoked a sense of pain within the painting that is paradoxically subtle and powerful. Pain, power, and creation came together in that simple stroke.

One of the last van Gogh paintings that I saw on this trip is probably van Gogh’s most famous painting, Starry Night, 1889. The painting is found at the Museum of Modern Art and is one of its most visited displays. It hangs on a divider in the center of a long room, and before I even came around the partition I could hear people exclaiming, “Starry Night. Ohh. Ahh. Oooooh. Starry Night!!!” Perhaps, this publicity, coupled with all the coffee mugs, mouse pads, posters, had built a reputation beyond what the painting actually merited, but I have to say I was disappointed when I rounded the corner and had my first glimpse of this painting.

Standing about ten feet back, with the rest of the crowd, I thought, “This is it?” I dutifully pulled out my camera and snapped a photo or two but more from a sense of obligation than wanting to capture my experience with the painting. I was just getting ready to move on to Kandinsky’s work behind me when I noticed that the crowd had also wandered away. Since I wouldn’t be in anyone’s sightline, I decided to get a little closer to the painting I was now thinking of as a dud.

About five feet from the painting, the brush strokes pulled me even closer. What looked flat at ten feet back, started to move as I did. I felt the roiling shapes of the sky. The fluidity and slight menace of the cypress trees. This painting gave me a visual representation of the scripture “All power is given unto me in heaven and earth” (Matt 28:18). And I stood up close as long as I could (until the next crowd rushed over), trying to absorb this painting. As I stepped back for a final look, and new pictures--trying to capture my experience--I no longer saw a flat painting, but a masterpiece. I walked away from the experience unsettled. Unsettled because of the . . . I can’t seem to find words beyond the cliché . . . power in the painting. But also unsettled by my experience. What if I hadn’t taken those five steps closer?